Homemade Autograph Books for Disney

Well, we arrived home yesterday (BOO!!!!) from our Disney vacation. It was both wonderful, and horrible, but that's what you get sometimes. Overall, I have a lot of fond memories of the trip, though.

Before my trip in 2012 with my friend and her family, I designed some digital autograph album pages- they turned out super cute, and the kids really liked them. Over the past 18 months, I have continued to add a few pages here and there for friends.

I finally offered them on Etsy over this past summer, and of course, made custom ones for our trip last week.

We got SO many compliments, and people (from cast members, to actual characters, to other guests) asking where we got them from, and wondering how they could get one- I really wish I had thought to make up business cards to have on hand with us in the character lines. Seriously, we could have handed out at least 50-100 when people were asking.

On our first night in a park, Minnie noticed that one of the books had a name on the cover (all of ours did), so she checked the name each time, and personalized her autograph for each of us!

Now, I am working on adding more pages for both specific characters, and generic pages for any character to use. We had a lot of characters we saw with no specific pages (which is fine, we had generic pages to use), but some were common enough we should have had pages for them. Below are some of the nearly 200 pages I have made. I have around 150 of them currently available on Etsy, with a new set of 110 that will be available by next week.

You can find these in several different sets to suit your needs. Each set is digital, so it can be reused over and over again for future trips.

Holiday Specific (currently includes Halloween and Christmas themed pages & covers only) - 32 pages including covers for $7.00

A 20 page book with 2 album cover choices, Princess themed - $5.00

A 20 page book with 2 album covers, Classic Character themed - $5.00

A 20 page book with 2 album covers, Assorted Characters - $5.00

A 110 page set, 100 unique pages, plus 10 album covers (No holiday pages included, but it includes all of the other pages & covers posted) for $20.00


Coupon Code available currently:

Blog15 - Save 15% on any purchase
Facebook25 - Save 25% on all purchases over $15.00

Gift Wrapping Tips & More

Now that my shopping is done, I have to tackle the job of sorting & wrapping gifts. We have 1 December baby (27th) and 1 January baby (15th), so when I shop for Christmas, if I find a good deal, I also birthday shop, which means sorting those items out from the Christmas items, as well.

***Read all the way to the bottom of this post! ;)

Here are some of my tips to help you out this year.

1. Call up your friends or relatives, and have a Wrap Party. Everyone brings gifts, wrapping paper, and you wrap, wrap, wrap, out of the eyes of prying kids. Also helpful? Additional adults who can write out disguised Santa tags.
2. Pick your paper carefully. If you have kids who snoop, one way to help deter them a bit is by not adding a tag to the paper when you wrap it. But to do that, you need to select 1 or 2 specific papers per child- and make a note of it! Cut a small scrap of each paper used, and tape it into a notebook with a name, so you can reference who gets what when you add tags on Christmas Eve. Or, simply tell the children which paper is theirs on Christmas Morning
3. Skip bows when wrapping if you are not putting them directly under the tree- they always fall off, or get crushed. I add bows to the gifts on the top of the pile as we play Santa on Christmas Eve. That way, there are bows, but without the crushed, knocked off pile left on the bottom.
4. If Santa still visits your house, and your children are still believers, then it is an absolute MUST to set aside a different wrapping paper for Santa gifts. I know, this seems like a no-brainer, but it took my then-3-year-old daughter exclaiming, "Look Mom, Santa uses the same wrapping paper as you!" to realize that maybe I should use a different paper for him. Now, I buy paper with Santa on it, and tags with Santa on them, and those are only for use on Santa gifts.
5. If you have holiday get togethers to go to, pick a separate paper for each location. This way, when it's time to sort out gifts to bring, you can visually do it faster than by sorting through names.
6. Buy your paper after Christmas! This way, it's cheaper. Stock up on it, and pack it away with the Christmas decorations. Last year, I found 9 rolls of gorgeous holographic designed wrapping paper for just $.19 a roll at CVS a few weeks after Christmas. I bought all 9. There isn't much on each roll, but at $.19, it's still cheaper than anything I'd be able to get this year.
7. Use newspaper. Oldie, but it works, and recycles! You can wrap in regular newspaper or comics. If you use regular, you can easily decorate it with markers or ink pads. Additionally, you can use brown paper bags cut flat to wrap smaller items in. Why spend $1.99 or $2.99 on a roll of paper? Where does it wind up? In the trash, torn to bits. 
8. Got a new stuffed animal? Don't wrap it! Tie a ribbon around it's neck, and nestle it in the branches of the tree. The kids just love seeing an immediate gift.
9. If you are wrapping something small, buy some dishtowels at Dollar Tree, and some wired ribbon, and wrap the gift in a festive towel. It doubles as a second gift, and looks nice.
10. Looking for boxes to wrap in? Save boxes you get from the store- cereal boxes, etc. Wrap the box up, so the paper is covering everything, and cut the top flaps off the box. Wrap the item with tissue paper, and use the box similar to a gift bag, with tissue sticking out the top.
11. Want a unique name tag? Dollar Tree and other stores have miniature clay ornaments this year that are flat on the back. Write the name on the back of the recipient, and tie it to the box with some pretty ribbon. It doubles as a gift!
12. Is it small? Why spend $1 on a gift bag, when you can spend a $1 on a stocking? Put the name on the front in glitter glue, and have tissue paper sticking out of the top. It doubles as a gift and a Christmas decoration. Or, go cheaper- make a stocking out of materials on hand!
    

 Feel free to add your own wrapping tips & hints in the comment section!

Oh, and the best part of this post? I'm giving away a FREE Christmas DVD of Fred Claus! Simply comment on the post for your chance to win a FREE Christmas DVD. The winner will be chosen on Tuesday, December 1st. Please include an email address! If I can not get a hold of the winner, a new winner will be picked!

Extra entries will not be given on this one, but please feel free to blog about the contest! The winner will be chosen using Random.org.

This DVD was bought new this year, and was opened & watched one time, before I found that I had a copy packed away with the Christmas gifts from last year! I must have received it as a gift, because I have no memory of having bought it before.

This copy is the standard movie, not HD, widescreen, or Blu-Ray. This movie will work in all standard DVD players.

Due to high shipping costs, this contest is good for people who live in the US only!